The long and indelible career of Rita Letendre is marked by continual innovation and fearless exploration, defying rigid categorization. As Wanda Nanibush notes, “Letendre has found a variety of ways to work through the seemingly impossible unification of expressionism, lyrical abstraction, and hard-edged abstraction.” While her practice evolved over decades, the mid-1950s to early 1960s was a particularly formative period, culminating in a series of abstractions that would set the stage for both national and international acclaim.

The vibrant culture of Montreal avant-garde abstraction at the time, orbiting the influential artist and teacher Paul-Émile Borduas, sparked a profound shift in Letendre’s early work, propelling her towards exploring painting as a means of self-expression and discovery. Initially engaging with the spontaneous, automatic approaches championed by Borduas and his circle, Letendre would later experiment with ordered rhythms and structured grid formations loosely inspired by the Plasticiens. Despite these explorations, she maintained a distinctive lyrical sensibility in her compositions; her application of paint remained gestural, fluid and emotive, refusing to be confined by a stringent ideology. Experimentation and reinvention were vital forces in her practice, as she went on to develop a singular visual language rooted in a deep commitment to emotional expression and the intuitive act of creation.

For Letendre, painting was a visceral process—an attempt to access the inner workings of the self, to give form to emotional intensity, and to engage with the elemental energies at the core of human experience. By 1961, Letendre would move into one of her most productive and transformative periods, translating this ethos into a striking series of works infused with heightened dynamism, dramatic forms and visual tension. Light is a central motif of this period, punctuating moody surfaces with ebullient flashes of cool white or radiant flares of warmth. As Nanibush aptly observes, “Letendre is a master of colour and light; the fiery quality of her work is significant to what makes it beautiful. Light moves through her work like a beacon of hope, a pathway to somewhere else, and as an uncontainable futurity.”

In this exceptional 1961 canvas, Letendre creates a charged, immersive composition, entwining lively currents of movement and gestural bands of vibrant colour against a stormy field of inky black rendered in heavy impasto. The overall impression is of something organic, chaotic and unruly. Vertical swathes of crimson surge upwards, framing the dynamic tableau, anchored by a swirling pool of tranquil cerulean. Gravitational forces course across the surface, converging in brilliant bursts of luminous white—a spark of renewal, of steadfast hope, of life against the surging void. Here, Letendre masterfully balances opposing visual forces—light and darkness, flux and stillness—and conjures the propulsive, emotive thrill of an artist in the throes of creative discovery. In a career defined by regeneration, experimentation and unrelenting evolution, this work stands as a remarkable example from a vital and visionary period.

For the biography on Dr. Luigi Rossi in PDF format, please click here.